Arthur Cohn (rabbi)

Arthur Cohn was born in 1862 in Flatow, West Prussia, the son of the local rabbi.

At the same time, he studied history and philology at the University of Berlin and received his doctorate under Theodor Mommsen.

[2] At the first Zionist Congress in 1897, Cohn gave a short speech in which he called for an official declaration on the relationship of Zionism to religion and expressed the hope "that national Judaism would be the gateway to religious Judaism" (Protocoll, 1911 edition, 215).

This led to Theodor Herzl's public declaration that "Zionism does not intend anything that could hurt the religious conviction of any direction within Judaism".

However, at the latest with the Tenth Zionist Congress, which took place in 1911, he no longer saw Zionism and religious Judaism as compatible.

Postcard from Gaston Levaillant to Rabbi Cohn, 1918, setting a wedding date. Today in the collection of the Jewish Museum of Switzerland .